Nowadays, teachers tend to use more effective teaching methods which stimulate students’ interest for a certain learning content. One of such teaching methods is a didactic-game method through which the students understand the learning content more easily, improve their communication skills and healthy competitiveness. This method allows the students to acquire the understanding of the learning content in a more fun way, while gaining knowledge faster and more lastingly. Furthermore, the method allows the teachers to get to know the students even more.
According to literature, teachers do not include enough didactic games in their environmental-science lessons in primary schools. Therefore, three competitive didactic games are provided in this thesis that teachers can use in their classrooms. Four research questions were set in order to find out whether didactic games contribute to better understanding of the content, deepening of knowledge and an increase in interest for the learning content among the students.
The results of the research show that the didactic games for the learning contents of environmental science, habitats and sense organs had a positive effect on the students. There was an improvement in the knowledge of these contents, better understanding of the concepts and the deepening of the prior knowledge. First, we announced the didactic games and motivated the students. They kept the motivation also when writing the pre-test and the after-test, which was found out with observation. The sample of students that were chosen for the purpose of the research, was small, therefore, the generalization of the results was not made.
The finding will be helpful and motivating for the teachers in the first cycle of primary school, which they can use when planning the environmental-science lessons. Using the didactic-game method, they will be able to get the students’ interest for work.
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